Sarah Jessica Parker: ‘I Am Not a Feminist’

In an entertainment industry seemingly fixated on pro-feminist sensibilities, actress and fashion icon Sarah Jessica Parker, in a recent cover story interview with Marie Claire, declared that she is not a feminist.

“I am not a feminist. I don’t think I qualify. I believe in women and I believe in equality, but I think there is so much that needs to be done that I don’t even want to separate it anymore,” the former Sex and the City star told the fashion magazine.

“I’m so tired of separation,” she added. “I just want people to be treated equally.”

When asked about the so-called wage gap between men and women, Parker said she wants to see people paid whatever they are worth.

“I would like all of that nonsense to end,” the 51-year-old star said. “I would like women to get paid for the value of their contributions, not by old-fashioned ideas about gender.”

Parker’s comments came after President Obama penned a 1,500-word essay this week in which he declared that he is a feminist and urged all men across the country to join him in branding themselves the same.

“It’s important that their dad is a feminist, because now that’s what they expect of all men,” Obama wrote. “The progress we’ve made in the past 100 years, 50 years, and, yes, even the past eight years has made life significantly better for my daughters than it was for my grandmothers. And I say that not just as President but also as a feminist.”

This is not new territory for SJP, who will next appear in the new HBO series Divorce; five years ago, Parker revealed in an interview that she is “not a feminist,” but a “humanist.”

“I’m the beneficiary of all the work my mother’s generation did,” the mother-of-three told the Telegraph in 2011. “They did all the grunt work and handed us this world view. We were raised to think we could have it all, but there’s some reality that rears its head.”

Parker added: “So what you decide is ‘I’ll die trying,’ but try to be realistic about what can happen, day to day. I took a page from Wendy Wasserstein’s book. She said ‘I’m not a feminist, I’m a humanist.'”

 

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson